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Source: GRDC's The Crop Doctor

Wheat, Australia’s major grain crop, is the product of thousands of years of human intervention in the form of selection and breeding.

Western Australia (WA) typically produces 40 per cent of the national wheat crop and of this approximately 95 per cent is sold overseas, mostly to the Asian and Middle Eastern markets, so it’s important to determine and meet market needs.

Last year InterGrain, the new WA wheat breeding company, released two promising varieties, the high yielding Australian Premium White (APW) variety Magenta and the premium quality udon noodle grade variety Yandanooka. Both are expected to have major market impact in WA and, in the case of Magenta, also in SA and Victoria.

The same wheat breeding team which produced high performing varieties such as Wyalkatchem , Carnamah , Calingiri, Arrino and Westonia has now produced Yandanooka and Magenta.

Average annual growth in wheat productivity in Australia has been about one per cent for the 20th century, until the 1980s, with the agronomic breakthrough associated with minimum tillage, when it became closer to four per cent, of which a quarter is attributed to better cultivars developed by wheat breeders.

While the systematic approach to wheat breeding began a century ago, the last decade has seen the emergence of a whole new toolkit for breeders associated with new discoveries in molecular biology. Plant breeders still work with the basics of crossing two plants with useful and contrasting characteristics to produce progeny with improved performance.

One particular application of the new techniques is to use molecular markers to complement traditional field and laboratory trials in the selection of the elite progeny with the desired combination of traits.

Senior InterGrain Wheat Breeder, Robin Wilson, says that the blend of traditional breeding with molecular marker techniques provides advantage in that breeders can better target genetic combinations they need to deliver simultaneously on yield, disease resistance, stress tolerance and quality.

InterGrain will work hard to speed up its processes, but farmers can already see benefits in the better varieties coming forward, according to Mr Wilson.

 

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